Hey, Kids, It's Shameless Self-Promotion Time!

As I think I mentioned a few weeks ago, I've been doing some writing for the wonderful folks at Bongo Comics of late, and I'm pleased to announce that my first issue of Simpsons Comics, issue #129, hits the stands of better comics shops all across America this very afternoon.

I hope you'll pick it up, buy it, read it, and then let me know what you thought of it. I heard back from only two people about last month's issue of Futurama Comics which I also wrote, and I'm starting to become paranoid. Did you all think it sucked runny eggs through a straw so badly, you were afraid to hurt my feelings by telling me? If so, fear not. My wife just bought me an electric oven, so I'm not likely to try gassing myself this time.

Seriously, let me know what you thought. I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks.

Looks Like All of You Were Right

Okay, so very early this morning Showtime Beyond aired what it claimed would be The Hills Have Eyes 2, the current installment in the franchise that is still playing in theaters, and, as many of you had predicted, what they actually showed was The Hills Have Eyes Part II, the 1985 sequel to the original film. So Showtime's listings were wrong. So what else is new?

Based on the generally terrible reviews for the current film, I'm not sure if I should consider myself a winner here or what?

But since so many of you asked, just thought I'd let you know.

Okay, Could Someone Please Explain This To Me?

Twelve days ago, The Hills Have Eyes 2, the sequel to last year's remake of Wes Craven's original The Hills Have Eyes, opened in theaters nationwide to mostly one-star reviews and less than stellar box office. Despite the urging of my buddy Bob Skir, I opted not to go with him to see the film at the local megaplex, saying I would rather wait until it hit cable, then watch it there.

Well, it appears I made a wise choice indeed since, according to my Tivo, The Hills Have Eyes 2 premieres on Showtime Beyond tomorrow night at 10.

Now, to the best of my knowledge, usually the way things go with a film is that it's first released to theaters, then three to six months later, it's released on DVD, and another six months to a year after that, it hits cable. If my Tivo is right, this may be hitting some new kind of record, since the film is also still playing in theaters.

And, before any of you go writing in to tell me that what's airing is actually only the sequel to the original The Hills Have Eyes, let me assure you that I already checked. The original sequel, called The Hills Have Eyes Part II (note the slightly different title), was made in 1985 and involved the atomic cannibals going after a busload of school children. It is also currently playing on cable.

No, according to my Tivo, the film I've marked it to record tomorrow night was made in 2007 and is described as "Vicious mutants attack National Guardsmen in the desert," which is exactly the plot of the new film.

So, my question is this: just how bad does a movie have to be for it to go straight to cable while it's still in the theaters?

I'm just asking, is all.

Hey, That Ant-Man Looks Almost Life-Sized

A few weeks ago, my good friend Ed Green invited me to join him at a local gaming shop for the pre-release premiere tournament of the new DC Heroclix: Origins collection. The basic concept is is simple. You sign up to play, buy three booster packs of the new set of figures, put together the best 300 point team you can from what you find in your packs, and then play four games of Heroclix against various other players for points. At the end of the tournament, the players with the highest number of points win extra booster packs, and various other nifty prizes. All in all, a terrific way to pass an afternoon.

Now, if what I just said to you makes no sense whatsoever, don't worry. You're not alone. Let me try to explain.

Heroclix is a game produced by a fine company called Wizkids. Each Heroclix is a fully-sculpted, fully-painted figure, about an inch or two high. There are numerous sets of various DC heroes and villains and Marvel heroes and villains, even a set of various Independent heroes and villains from some of the smaller comics publishers. And, I've gotta tell ya, gang -- some of them sculpts are spectacular. I started collecting them a few years ago, basically to get figures of my own characters,and had little interest in actually playing the game. Until I finally tried it, of course.

Okay, let me see if I can explain this so even I can understand what I'm saying. Basically, the way Heroclix works is this: each figure sits on a circular disc that contains a dial. A window on the dial shows you several numbers. These numbers tell you that character's range of powers and abilities, often differentiated by various colors. To start, you pick a number of points per side, assemble a collection of characters whose total numbers add up to that limit, put these characters on a board that represents a locale, then start tossing dice, moving your figures around until each side's characters are within a designated combat range. Then the real fun begins. One of your characters announces its intentions to attack one of your opponent's characters, and you roll the dice. If you roll a number higher than the number needed to harm your opponent, that character takes an indicated number of clicks of damage (which is how the game gets its name). Basically, you turn the dial on the bottom of the disc the indicated numbers of clicks, and the numbers in the window are lowered, often changing color and thus the character's powers as well. When the character has taken sufficient clicks of damage, the letters KO appear in the window, and the character is out of the game. When one side has eliminated the other side's characters, the game is over. Tournament rules are a lot more complicated, and I won't even attempt to go into them here.

There are, of course, a few exceptions to the rule. Certain characters, like DC's Captain Marvel, for example, starts with low numbers on the dial, indicating the character is still in Billy Batson mode. The first time he's attacked, he essentially shouts "Shazam!" and his powers are activated. Marvel's Hulk figure, on the other hand, starts out with a high number and every time he's attacked, the numbers on the dial keep getting higher. After all, the madder Hulk gets, the stronger Hulk gets.

I haven't played the game nearly as often as I'd like, but I must admit to having a real ball every time I do. My fellow players, like poor Ed, for instance, not so much. You see, we'll be playing, and Ed will go, "Okay, I'm attacking your Wolverine with my Storm, and I'm using Storm's bamboozle powers to thwart your claws." And I will say, "What bamboozle powers? Storm doesn't have bamboozle powers." And Ed will point to his dial and say, "Look, see? She has a pink 17, which means she has bamboozle powers." And I'll just smile and say, "But I created her. So, no, she doesn't." And Ed will glare at me and start to say something, and then think better of it, and after a few seconds, he'll just stand there with smoke pouring out of his ears. Which really is a big part of why the game is so much fun. At least, for me.

Seriously though, I do recommend checking out your local comics or game shop to see which Heroclix they have and giving the game a try. It can be incredibly addictive.

Oh. And if anyone happens to have an extra Mongul clix, could you let me know? I'm still missing that one for my display case.

The Future is Now

Okay, okay, so I know I promised to blog more often and I've been doing a terrible job of it, but I really have been busy, and I've been a little depressed, and I haven't had anything of lasting value to add to anything anybody else has been blogging, so I haven't blogged and I'm sorry.

So there.

There is, however, a pretty good reason for this particular post. Today, Wednesday March 28th, is New Comics Day across most of the country. And if you rush right out to your local comics shop, you might still be able to find one of the reasons I've been so busy.

It's Futurama #30 from the wonderful folks at Bongo Comics. It's my first regular straight-out humor story in Heaven knows how many years and I'm actually pretty proud of it.

When the brave-beyond-all-reason Bill Morrison first asked me to write for Bongo, I was pretty firmly convinced Simpsons creator Matt Groening had clearly whacked Bill upside the head a few too many times with the Insanity Stick. Still, never one to shirk a challenge (or a chance to work with a terrific editor), I nervously accepted the opportunity, and I'm here to tell you how happy I am that I did. It's nice to have a chance to flex a different creative muscle for a change, and to have the work well-received by the person who was foolish enough to offer it to you in the first place. It was a lot more work than I'd first imagined it would be, but as the late, great actor and director Sir Donald Wolfit reportedly said, "Writing Wolverine is easy, comedy is hard."

The issue is called "Fry and the Double-Bag, Must-Have Item" and the comics collectors among you can probably guess where the story goes from there.

I should also mention that I wrote next month's Simpsons Comics #129 as well, but I'll remind you of that when we get closer to release time. Over the weekend, I finished my second Simpsons script, and am already hard at work on the next one, so this may be the start of something big. We shall see.

Anyway, should you happen to pick up Futurama #30 at a comics shop near you, I really would appreciate it if you'd drop me a line and let me know what you thought of it.

Frankly, I need all the encouragement I can get.

I'm Off to See the Wizard

Despite all rumors to the contrary, I'm not dead, just really busy at the moment, dealing with some family matters and the adventures of getting and activating my new Palm Pilot, which I promise I'll bore you with soon. However, it dawned on me that I should let any and all of you in the Southern California area know that I'll be a guest this weekend at WizardWorld LA, which is being held downtown at the LA Convention Center. I'm not sure yet if I'll be able to make it there on Friday, but I'll definitely be there all day Saturday and most of the day Sunday. I've no idea which, if any, panels they'll have me on, but they have given me a table to sit at, so I'll be around to sign autographs and the like. All you have to do is find me. For more details, click here.

Hope to see you there. I'll be the person who looks sort'a like me.

So How Exactly Do You Make Fire Again?

I dropped and broke my beloved Tungsten/T3 Palm Pilot on the kitchen floor Sunday afternoon, and was instantaneously transported back to the Stone Age. I had not fully realized just how dependent on that gizmo I had become until I lost it. It contained my Rolodex, my calendar, a bunch of cool recipes, my MP3 player, my Vindigo for checking on movie times and such, and a thousand or so lists I had made over the years including, for example, my DVD collection, various lists of books and comics and the like I need to fill in runs, and Ghod alone knows what else.

Now I think I may have mentioned way back in my very first post that the Tungsten 3 became obsolete about 37 seconds after my darling wife bought it for me for Christmas a few years ago. It's been a bitch-and-three-quarters trying to get accessories for it. But I don't care. It was mine and I loved it. I don't think I'm going to be able to have it repaired, so first thing this morning, I'm gonna have to go out and start hunting for its replacement. I need something that will allow me to import all my old files into the new machine, as well as whatever nifty improvements may have been added over the last several years. I don't think I want a Treo, since I'm not sure adding a phone won't subtract some of the things I already like.

This should be quite the adventure since, as I've mentioned repeatedly, I'm the King of the Luddite people.

If I'm not back by Wednesday, kindly send out a search party.

More Than My Quota of Quotes

Well, cool.

The new Quote of the Day feature here at WeinWords seems to be functioning perfectly. Coincidently, today's quote from Lord Chesterfield: "Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well" reminds me of one of my own quotes from the book, Science Fictionisms, compiled by my late and dearly beloved friend, Bill Rotsler. Therein, under the section labeled Lifeisms, I said: Never be embarrassed by the things you cannot do. Be embarrassed by the things you can do and don't do well. I'm quoted on the same page as Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. and Aldous Huxley. Now what could possibly be more humbling than that?

Arguably my most famous quote appeared in Reader's Digest a number of years ago, again thanks to Bill. The quote is: A true friend is someone who is there for you, when they would rather be anywhere else. If you ever bother to Google me (which really should include dinner and drinks first), you'll find that almost a third of the absurdly large number of links there will connect you to that quote, rather than any of the serious writing I've done over the years. I find that both curious and fascinating.

Just for the heck of it, I decided to Google myself earlier (I'm hoping I'll actually call me later as I promised) and was amazed to discover a site that contains literally dozens of quotes from me, culled from various interviews I've given over the years. If you're interested and have absolutely nothing better to do, you can check them out here at BrainyQuotes.com. Many of them concern the art of writing, so I suppose they do have some value.

Let me know what you think.

I See, Quoth He...

Okay, as you've all probably noticed -- and as my wife keeps vociferously complaining -- I'm not blogging here nearly as often as she, you, or even I, for that matter, would like me to be. Thus, in a perhaps vain effort to have you all drop by on a more regular basis, I've just added a spanking new feature to this here blog. You'll find it to the right and just below my profile. It's a Quote of the Day and, hopefully, we'll all learn a little something from it as time goes by. Who knows? Maybe they'll even get around to using one of my quotes here eventually.

Hey, don't laugh. Anything is possible.

Oh, and a quick claws up to the first person who can tell me where the title of this post originally comes from.

I'll Take "Stuff Len Created" For $1000, Alex

In case I've never mentioned it, my wife Christine is somewhat Catholic and I'm peripherally Jewish. This might be a cause for friction in some households, but not in ours. That's because my wife and I share the same faith. You see, we watch Jeopardy! Religiously. When we're home, we watch it over dinner. When we're out, we Tivo it and watch it when we get home. If we're out for some prolonged period of time, away at a convention, for example, we Tivo it, then prop our eyelids open with toothpicks when we get home, and watch an Alex Trebeck marathon.

We are so committed to the show that, a number of years ago, when I was stuck in an airport, waiting to board what becoming a long-delayed flight, and Christine was still living in Cleveland, attending law school, I called her at home when I knew the show was about to begin, and she relayed the entire episode to me, answers and all, over the phone. Hey, stop looking at me like that. I know what that sounds like. But it is, as I've said, our religion.

We each have our own strengths and weaknesses in the game, of course. I tend to excel in categories relating to the Arts and Media, anything involving TV, Film, Literature, Poetry, People and Places in the News, and any of the trick categories, things like Before & After, Rhyme Time, Stupid Answers and the like. My single worst category, bar none, is Colleges and Universities. For Christine, on the other hand, C&U is arguably her best category, and she's terrific at Geography, History, Math, and anything that requires an actual education.

For years, Chris has been pushing me to take the test and try out for the game. I decline vigorously, telling her that the night I actually got to be on the show, the categories would inevitably include things like Famous Left-handed Plumbers, The History of Lint, Nuns' Shoe Sizes, Native Cheeses of Saskatoon, Things Len Has Never Even Heard Of and, of course, Colleges and Universities. Never one to be put off by my cowardice, Chris tried out for the show and is now on a waiting list to actually appear on the air. And yet, she still keeps pushing me to try as well.

I thought the problem was solved for good and all last year when I was one of the recurring panelists on the Live On Stage revival of the classic TV game show What's My Line? I promise a discussion of that as a separate blog post real soon. Even on nights when I wasn't on the panel, I'd be in the audience of the show. On the evening in question, we had a quartet of contestants, three men and a woman, whose line turned out to be that they were the question writers for Jeopardy! After the show, our dear friend, the lovely and talented Lisa Jane Persky, of whom I've spoken here before, brought me over to meet one of the writers. The moment we were introduced, the guy freaked. He started shouting to his friends, "Quick. Come over here. You've got to meet this man. You'll never believe who he is." Turns out the three guys, at least, were all fans of mine. We shook hands, exchanged pleasantries, and I figured that was it. I was finally off the hook. There was no way they would ever let me be a contestant on the show if I personally knew the people who write the questions! I figured that was as involved as I would ever get with the show and I breathed a great sigh of relief.

Thus it is, with no small scintilla of pride but with an overwhelming amount of astonishment, that I'm here tonight to suggest you all Tivo, tape, or otherwise record this Wednesday's episode of Jeopardy! That's Wednesday, February 21st. Check your local listings for the correct time and channel. Why, you may ask? Lemme tell you.

According to a super-secret inside Hollywood source-type person, the names of all the categories for Double Jeopardy are the names of some of our favorite mutants. I know for certain that two of the categories are Wolverine and Storm. I can't wait to discover what the others are. "Night"Crawler, perhaps? At the end, after listing all the category but one, I expect Alex will say something along the lines of, "And what do all these categories have in common?" at which point, he'll reveal the final category: The X-Men.

Now keep in mind that none of the earlier categories will actually be about the X-Men. Storm, I expect, will be about hurricanes and typhoons and their ilk, Wolverine will probably be about the Mighigan sports team, and the same sort of thinking goes for the other categories. Only the X-Men category is likely to actually be about the X-Men. Still, I've somehow managed to avoid being a contestant on Jeopardy! and gone straight to being a topic. Frankly, I couldn't be more proud.

So tune in on Wednesday and let me know what you think of the show, okay? I promise to be sitting right there next to you in spirit.

And, hey, will you please stop hogging the remote?

And THAT...is the State of the Art

As I think I mentioned to you when we start started chatting like this, I absolutely adore Musical Theater. When I was back in New York City last April for the first time in five years, I managed to see eight shows in seven days. From Norbert Leo Butz's Tony-winning turn in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels to the heartwarming retro-musical The Drowsy Chaperone to The 25th Annnual Putnam County Spelling Bee (where I was fortunate enough to be chosen as one of the Spellers) to the surprisingly entertaining Hairspray to the catastrophically awful Elton John tuner LeStat to the wonderfully reimagined Sweeney Todd (and, hey, you haven't experienced Broadway until you've watched the incredible Patti LuPone as a tuba-playing Mrs. Lovett) to the ingeniously twisted Avenue Q to Wallace Shawn's off-Broadway opus The Music Teacher (a terrible show improved immensely by the wonderful performance of my niece Kristina Valada-Viers, not that I'm prejudiced or anything), there wasn't one night when my butt wasn't sitting in an aisle seat somewhere in town, happily transported.

The problem with living in the Los Angeles area is that there are far fewer large theaters to house the big shows. After the Pantages and the Ahmansen, the number drops off precipitously. Oh, there are dozens of much smaller theaters, many of them 99-seaters, so shows do get produced, but generally on a far smaller scale. But, joy of joys, somewhere right in the middle, there is Reprise!

The program began a decade ago, calling itself Reprise: Broadway in Concert. The premise was simple. Three times a year, for about two weeks at a time, a talented cast would revive a classic or little-seen Broadway musical. The costumes and sets were almost non-existent, the cast was working on book, which meant they were carrying their scripts with them on stage, but the entertainment value was terrific. The first production was Promises, Promises, based on the film The Apartment, and starring Jason Alexander of Seinfeld fame. The other shows that season were Finian's Rainbow and Wonderful Town. The second season's shows included The Pajama Game, The Three Penny Opera and Of Thee I Sing. And with each new production, Reprise took another step forward. By the start of the third season and their production of Bells Are Ringing, the scripts in hand were completely gone, there were costumes aplenty and even some pretty inventive if still minimal sets. My lovely wife Christine and I became season subscribers with that third season and we've literally been sitting front row center ever since. I won't mention all the other shows we've seen at Reprise, which, by the way, operates out of the Freud Playhouse on the campus of UCLA. You can find that out yourself in you're interested by clicking on the link above.

All of this is by way of prelude to last Friday, when Christine and I went to see the second of this season's Reprise productions, Steven Sondheim's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece, Sunday in the Park with George. Now I'll admit right up front that I'm a Sondhead. With the single exception of Passion, which I've just never been able to wrap my heart around, there isn't a Sondheim work I'm not crazy about. Company may just be my all-time favorite musical, and I've seen God knows how many different productions of the show, just as I have with Sweeney Todd, Assassins, Into the Woods, Follies, Merrily We Roll Along, Pacific Overtures, and all the rest. Still, while Company is my favorite Sondheim show, Sunday... comes in a close second. The first act is the fictionalized version of artist George Seurat's efforts to paint his pointillist masterpiece, A Sunday on the Island of La Grande Jatte, while the second act focuses on Seurat's neo-artist great-grandson's efforts to bring his own work before the public and how little the business of art has really changed in the past 100 years. If you're a writer, a poet, a painter, an artist of any stripe, it's almost impossible not to know what these men are going through and thus share their pain.

This production was directed by Jason Alexander, coming full circle from his involvement in Reprise's first production, and starred Manoel Felciano (who, coincidentally, I'd seen last April playing Toby in Sweeney Todd) and the lovely Kelli O'Hara (Tony-nominated last year for her role in the Broadway revival of The Pajama Game) in the roles of George and Dot, first assayed on the Great White Way by the astonishing team of Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters. And that, in many ways, was the big problem I had with this production, and I will admit it was a personal one. Once you've seen the characters played by Patinkin and Peters, it's almost impossible to imagine them played by anyone else. Both Felciano and O'Hara have wonderful voices and did commendable jobs, but they lacked the commitment, the heartbreaking passion, the originals brought to the roles.

My wife, who had never seen the original production, enjoyed this one quite a bit, but I'll have to give the show six claws up out of a possible ten.

In May, we see the final Reprise production of the season, Richard Rogers' little-seen No Strings. Expect another report from the aisle then.

I've Figured It Out

A female Astronaut wearing diapers and carrying Maxwell's Silver Hammer travels almost a thousand miles to attempt the murder of her "rival" for the affections of a man who barely even knows her.

The entire city of Boston, Massachusetts goes into Red Alert Terrorist Lockdown when they think they're being invaded by hundreds of LiteBrite images of a crimefighting Milk Shake.

Celebrity footnote Anna Nicole Smith hasn't even had time to start spinning in her grave when yet another man, the prepaid-Prince husband of fellow footnote, 90-year-old Zsa Zsa Gabor -- the husband of ZSA ZSA FREAKIN' GABOR, fer Chri'sake -- steps forward to join the DMV-sized line of those claiming paternity of Smith's maybe-heiress infant daughter.

And that's all just in the past week.

It's obvious, isn't it? David Lynch is currently writing reality -- and we're all living in Twin Peaks.